The garden is withering. I was going to take photos and post happily about how the cardinal climber has grown up to deck height and wound through the trellis my sweet peas vacated, and the zucchini leaves are bigger than my head now with bold yellow flowers- but yesterday I saw to my dismay that half the beds are unwell. All the leaves turned a sickly greyish color and severely wilted. Carrots, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, lovage, cantaloupe and zucchini affected. So many nice tomatoes in there, but all still too green to pick! It's spread to the cardinal climber vine too so I'm doing work to cut things out.
We had three days of very heavy afternoon downpours- I wonder if the plants simply drowned. Also I caught a half dozen harlequin bugs among the collard greens- they could very well be the culprits. It's time to go out with gloves and a trash bag. I'm acutely reminded of the time years ago, on another property, when I had to rip out most of my garden plants- especially the green beans- due to similar symptoms. Harlequin bugs showed up in that garden, too.
Now I don't think so. Large patch of grass around the garden is also withered, which it shouldn't be quite the opposite given how much rain we've had! I walked up the side of the house and lots of plants there show damage too- pale splotches all over leaves on the joe pye, pokeweed, lamb's ears, grass and clover and plantain weeds.
ReplyDeleteI don't care so much about the weeds being affected, but with the grass also turned brown/white and dead looking I suspect it's runoff from a job my husband hired a few days ago to wash our roof shingles. He was supposed to use something organic that wouldn't harm plants, or that was very diluted, but the driveway area sure smelled very strong like bleach when he was done. I'm feeling very ANGRY right now.
I thought at first it was a virus or bacterial wilt or insect damage spreading through my garden, or rot from the rain- but none of that would harm the grass also!